Department of Information & Communication Engineering

Smart Wheelchair

Android Controlled Smart Wheelchair for Disabilities

Our research goes on the topic named “Android Controlled Smart Wheelchair for Disabilities”. In Bangladesh there are about 5 million Disables and paralyzed people. The one and only assistant device is traditional wheelchair for them. As the wheelchairs are low cost and non-motorized system, these wheelchairs also need help of a family person to move. So another 5 million people are engaged to assist those users. Moreover our Bangladesh is a developing country. The economic condition of most of the people is not good enough so they can’t import a modern or motorized wheelchair from abroad for their disable family members. These modern wheelchair costs at least 3 to 5 lac BDT. That’s why our research topic was basically on a smart low cost wheelchair for the people of Bangladesh. The control architecture is very interesting as like as the android game. More elaborately we can say when it’s possible to move a virtual car/motor cycle in an android game using motion or button control, why not we can use this technology in real life. That’s the science behind the control architecture of this smart wheelchair. It can be controlled using button or motion of an android including break & driving command. Another Biometrics feature is that when a user faces any physical crisis, it will raise an alarm to aware the surroundings people by using the Heart Rate of him. This feature can be further extended to aware his family members in addition to the surrounding people by a GSM shield. So this technology can be a good monitoring system for patient in hospital or emergency cases.

ICE Smart Wheelchair

The researcher Tarun Debnath says the main benefit of this wheel chair is that it will cost very low when we will consider it in commercial purpose. At the time of Research & Development in our lab it costs around 70,000 BDT. This cost will reduce to 25,000-30,000 BDT in commercial purpose. So the common people of Bangladesh will be able to afford this wheel chair easily. Moreover 5 million assistant people will be free to contribute in GDP and the disables will start to lead an independent life as they want.

The Assistant Professor & Chair of the department Md. Anwar Hossain, who was the coordinator of this research, thinks this type of digital assistive device will improve the life style of physically challenged people one step forward. He also thinks such type of research of our department will accelerate the government vision of Digital Bangladesh.

ICE Smart Wheelchair

Also Assistant professor A F M Zainul Abadin who was the supervisor of this research says “There are over 5 million disabled people in Bangladesh needing the help of others to move about. If we are able to arrange such Smart Chairs for the physically challenged people, they can move about on their own”

At Research & Development it was supported financially by Universal Group, Pabna. Now Bangladesh Government has taken this research to support through A2I (Access to Information), Prime Minister’s Office so that the research can be useful for our country.